Project Overview

Everyone aspires for a better home. Living in a comfortable house helps people to lead their lives satisfactorily and with happiness. Considering this, A&D plans to improve houses of people who are unable to better their houses by themselves. One of the village that A&D has embarked upon with this initiative is Aruthankanvilai.

In this village’s the people are living in kutcha huts and damaged houses. These huts are constructed using coconut leaves and have gaps in their roofs. These gaps cause several difficulties especially during the monsoon. The rains easily enters into the houses through these openings and cause discomfort to the people as they are not able to sleep or stay inside the houses. The solution to this problem is to build a house with a better materials. When A&D realised this, it proposed to build new houses in this village.

The people have provided the land for this construction. In every step, A&D gets the help from its local partner PRAXIS, which is been working in this area for nearly 30 years. PRAXIS helps A&D to implement this project in a manner with the local communities participation and involvement. PRAXIS has a long experience in dealing with this community and this helps A&D as well to deal with the beneficaries from Aruthangavilai. This project was planned to be implemented only after discussions in the village with the people. These exercises in community participation are done by A&D and PRAXIS to understand the expectations of people and the resources of that village. This exercise is called Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA).

In this village, A&D has of now adopted 23 beneficiaries (upto a maximun of 25) whose houses are in a terrible condition. A&D engineers and architects visited these beneficiaries’ houses and have collected data and mapped the current living conditions and status of the houses. To start the construction process, the lands will be surveyed. All the 23 house plans are to be different from the other, designed according to the location and to the family requirement and tailor-made to the needs and aspirations of the beneficiaries.

The objective of the Housing at Aruthankanvilai is to improve the habitat conditions by rebuilding the houses for people who are unable to do so on their own.